Courtesy: Algarvedailynews.com | 05 November, 2015
The German government has admitted that it is still paying pensions to Spaniards who volunteered to fight for the Nazis in WWII.
The arrangement was originally struck with the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. He had encouraged his countrymen to sign up to fight for Hitler rather than Communist Stalin between 1941 and 1943.
In a written reply to a parliamentary question, the government said it was still paying more than €100,000 a year to pensions to 41 former combatants, eight of their widows and one orphan.
More than 47,000 Spaniards signed up to the Division Azul – Blue Division – to join Nazi troops on Germany’s eastern front between 1941 and 1944.
A pension agreement was struck by Franco with the Federal Republic of Germany in 1962 for the Blue Division fighters.
In return, Spain agreed to pay a stipend to the widows of fallen airmen of Hitler’s Condor Legion, who bombed Spain during the Civil War of 1936 and 1939 and most famously carried out the bombardment of the Basque town Guernica.
The German government said that 47,000 Spanish volunteers had fought for Nazi Germany under an agreement between Hitler and Franco, part of a deal which prevented Spain from entering the war after its own three-year civil war won by Franco’s fascist forces in 1939 with help from Nazi Germany and Benito Mussolini’s Italy.
The written answer also said that 22,000 Blue Division members were either killed, wounded or declared missing in action during the war. Other estimates put Spanish dead on the Eastern Front at around 5,000.
It is “a scandal that 70 years after the war, Germany is still paying more than €100,000 a year to Nazi collaborators,” said German MP Andrej Hunko, of Germany’s The Left (Die Linke) party.
He said the fascist effort in eastern Europe had been a war of extermination.
He added: “For me it is incomprehensible that the German government should stick to those payments when so many victims of the war are still waiting today for their rightful compensation.”
“It’s an absolute disgrace to think the German government is still paying out to Nazi volunteers,” said MP Jon Iñarritu of the left-wing Basque party Amaiur.
“It doesn’t make sense, contravenes EU law and serves to humiliate victims of fascism,” he said.
“It was my understanding that Germany had a completely different attitude when it came to historical memory and the rejection of fascism.”
Journal of People 